Malzahn wanting to have a starter in place before the opener against the Ducks on Aug. 31 makes sense, of course. Doing so will allow Malzahn and offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham to install a gameplan curated to that quarterback’s strengths. It will also give Oregon an opportunity to prepare for that specific quarterback, which one would surmise would give Malzahn reason to keep the starting job shrouded in mystery before the start of the season.

That hasn’t been Malzahn’s modus operandi during his tenure at Auburn, though.

In each of his first six seasons as Auburn’s head coach, Malzahn has had a starting quarterback in place no later than nine days ahead of the team’s season opener. The longest-lasting quarterback competition of Malzahn’s entire coaching career came in 2016, when Sean White beat out Jeremy Johnson and John Franklin III for the starting job on Aug. 25 — a little more than a week before Auburn opened the season at home against Clemson on Sept. 3.

In 2017, Jarrett Stidham officially earned the starting job on Aug. 14 after 10 practices and two scrimmages during fall camp. In 2015, Johnson was named the starter on April 20 after the conclusion of spring practices. In 2013, Nick Marshall established himself as the Tigers’ starter after 18 fall practices.

The only real exception during Malzahn’s tenure was in 2014, when Johnson was anointed the starter for the season opener five days before the Tigers played Arkansas — though that was due to a season-opening suspension to Marshall, the incumbent at the position. Even then, Malzahn admitted afterward that Johnson knew he would start that game for “a while” before the official announcement.

This time around, Malzahn and Dillingham will have to decide between two players who have never started a game at this level and have just one game’s worth of college experience between them. Gatewood appeared in the Music City Bowl against Purdue in mop-up time, which marked his only gametime during a redshirt season. Nix, meanwhile, just enrolled in the spring after winning back-to-back Class 6A state championships at Pinson Valley and earning the Alabama Mr. Football award as a senior.

Those two were declared 1 and 1A in the quarterback race by Malzahn last week, when junior Malik Willis — who had been Stidham’s primary backup each of the last two seasons — and redshirt freshman Cord Sandberg were formally eliminated from the competition.

“It’s extremely hard to rotate four guys and all that, so we just really wanted to narrow it down,” Malzahn said. “It just so happened that about halfway through spring, those two guys really started to separate themselves. They both are very athletic. They both got great arms. Probably the biggest thing that stood out to me was that they were desperate. They were to win the job, and their teammates knew it. So, I’m really excited; really excited about both those guys and going into summer.”

The Oregon game will mark the first time since Malzahn’s first season that he will start a freshman — either redshirt or true — at quarterback. Johnson had a spot start against Western Carolina that season due to an injury to Marshall. Outside of that instance, however, Malzahn has not historically entrusted a freshman to start at the most important position on the field.

On Wednesday, however, Malzahn remarked at how different freshman quarterbacks are nowadays.

“It’s really something,” Malzahn said. “They’re more polished than ever before in the way they’re coached…. Bo, of course, his dad (Patrick Nix) was a great player (at Auburn), great coach. Then Joey Gatewood, we started recruiting Joey, I think, when he was in eighth or ninth grade, so he was a guy we knew had a chance to really be special. Both those guys — and I’ll tell you this: They’re both really athletic. I think that’s big, obviously, in our league. Things break down about half the time, so you got to have guys who can create and make good decisions.”

“I can see a variation of scenarios from that standpoint,” Dillingham said. “Hopefully people separate themselves, but at the same time we’re going to play the best people who we feel it’s necessary to win football games. If that’s 17 quarterbacks, I don’t care. If 17 quarterbacks give us the best chance to win, and playing six different Wildcat guys, it doesn’t matter to me. We’re going to put the players back there who we feel is necessary to win football games.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.